


Healer, Heal Thyself (but don't forget that nurses get the job done)

by distractionpie



Series: EreJean Week 2020 [5]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dead Marco Bott, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Past Marco Bott/Jean Kirstein
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23464180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: Nearly a year into their relationship and Eren accepts that he doesn't know everything about Jean's life - they're taking it slow and everybody has their private business. But when Jean starts sneaking around and lying about his plans, it's only a matter of time before doubt and curiosity get the better of Eren.
Relationships: Jean Kirstein/Eren Yeager
Series: EreJean Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1681744
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	Healer, Heal Thyself (but don't forget that nurses get the job done)

It begins with Armin and his new gym membership. At least for Eren.

They’re talking about it over lunch. Eren is always intrigued by Armin’s fitness habits, because he’s weirdly ripped for a guy who faked an asthma note at the age of eight to get out of P.E for life.

“Oh, when you’re there say hi to Jean for me?” Eren asked. The downside of dating a fellow medical professional was the hours, and Eren has been stuck on an evening shift for weeks so it would be nice to remind Jean that just because Eren can’t see him doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking of him.

“Huh?”

“That’s his gym,” Eren explained. The twenty-four-hour place right by the hospital was a magnet for medical staff, although Eren had never made the switch from the one closer to home. “Lately he’s been swinging by after he gets off.” Eren’s been ignoring it for now, figuring Jean was just filling his empty evenings and would back off once their shifts were better aligned, but it would still be nice to have Armin check in — there was healthy and then there was obsessive.

“Really?” Armin was making a face. “That’s my usual time too and I’ve never seen him there.”

Which was strange, because Armin had always been observant, but perhaps they were in different sections. Eren’s never asked Jean about his preferred means of working out, only enjoyed the results.

He doesn’t think any more on it, until he does.

Because the gym incident becomes Jean forgetting a lunch date, and he’s so apologetic Eren has to laugh because it’s happens to the best of them, but then he says he’s for his morning coffee but later that afternoon Eren sees him having another even though Jean swears by sticking to one on his days off so the caffeine will still do its job when he needs it to get through a long shift. It’s dirt on his pants, even though Jean is a city boy through and through, spends most of his days in an immaculate hospital and keeps his home just as clear, at least the few times Eren has seen it because he rarely goes Jean’s place, his was nearer to the hospital and with the hours they both worked that was a tempting convenience, more than once Eren had teased that Jean only went to bed with him because it meant a shorter commute the morning after, but now he wondered if there was another reason Jean didn’t want Eren in his home.

He knows so little about who Jean is outside of work and their relationship. Before he’d always put it down to Jean being a workaholic, most people who’d reached so far in their careers at his age were, but now he can see that there’s something, or someone, else that has been kept from Eren.

He lays it all out, the supposed daily gym visits, all the parts of Jean’s life he’s never been invited into, the hours unaccounted for with even excuses, and watches his friends faces fall.

Mikasa is the one to say it. “Eren… I hate to ruin your happiness, but it seems to me like Jean isn’t being fully honest with you.”

And the words stuck with him as he noticed more and more how strange some of Jean’s claims were regarding where he was going and what he claimed he was doing. So Eren had watched a little more closely, guiltily asked casual questions to verify if Jean’s ventures matched his words, and all too often the answer was a damning no.

The final straw had been when Sasha had mentioned seeing Jean walking down the street with flowers.

Flowers.

Jean had never bought him flowers. Sure, Eren never asked for any or bought any for Jean, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have been charmed by the gesture. But somebody else was getting that special treatment.

It was such a petty thing to be the final straw to break Eren’s increasingly thready trust, but he could delude himself no longer.

And now it was time to do something about it.

He could call Jean out, but somebody who was so willing to lie, who was so good at it that Eren could still hardly believe the extent of his deceptions, might not give him the truth. And Eren needed to know. Who? Why? And how long had this gone on for? Did whoever Jean was sneaking around with know about Eren, or were they just as in the dark?

The only way to be sure would be to catch him in the act.

It took a few days for the opportunity to arise — all too often their shifts didn’t align, always a nuisance but now for new reasons.

But then Historia wanted to swap because she’s got a thing in the morning, Eren wasn’t really listening, he was just focused on the opportunity being offered. Anyway, Historia is a great nurse, and super dedicated, he’d have been willing to trade with her even if he hadn’t had his own reasons for wanting the evening off.

It was easy to hang out in the foyer, chatting with the intake team and distracting them from the glares of waiting patients who saw them as nothing more than gate-keeping receptionists and blamed them for their own lack of understanding of triage.

Until Jean’s shift ended and he walked right out.

There’s no small-talk for him, sometimes he’s every inch the uppity surgeon stereotype. No flowers this time too, but no gym bag either, despite the fact he’d claimed he was going every day after work.

He walked, thank god, it would have been so much harder to trail him in a car, even if Eren is a little frustrated that he’s once again been deprived of a legitimate reason to jump into a cab declaring ‘follow that man!, especially when Jean kept walking, far past the point it would have been sensible to drive.

Walking until he passed under an arch reading:

_Santa Maria Memorial Garden and Burial Grounds_

Eren hesitated. Suddenly, this felt wrong. It was not impossible that Jean was meeting a clandestine lover in a cemetery, but it was unlikely. Perhaps this wasn’t where he’d been going all those other times he’d lied about his destination, but Eren had to decide based on the options available to him. When Jean was keeping so much from him, surely any information was good information?

He followed, maintaining a careful distance, as Jean made his way past the most recent graves, back one year, two years, three and he stops, folds himself up into a cross-legged seated position in front of one of the headstones.

This is not a scandalous liaison.

Eren should leave.

But he has to know.

If the way Jean’s shoulders sag as he leans forward as if draw into the grave has anything to do with his strange behaviour of late, Eren can’t let it go. If it means being caught following Jean, perhaps that’s for the best. At least then they can get whatever it is out in the open.

He gives up on stealth, walks until he can read the engraving, an unfamiliar name and dates too close together.

_Marco Bodt_

_Beloved son, brother, fiancé_

_Gone too soon_

_1991-2017_

Sunflowers sat at its base.

Jean had startled when Eren’s shadow fell over him and when he looked up it was with red-rimmed eyes wide with alarm.

“Eren… you…”

“Followed you.”

There was no point denying it, Eren didn’t have any other reason to be here, and after this intrusion the least he owed Jean was honesty. “I’m sorry,” Eren said. The deception about Jean’s destination remained odd, but this wasn’t the moment to challenge Jean on it and whatever his suspicions, one look at the raw pain on Jean’s face is damning evidence that Eren had gone too far. “I shouldn’t have followed you. Your friend—”

“Marco was my fiancé.”

Eren opened his mouth.

No words came.

It was, as he’d grown to suspect, another love, but not a living one.

What could he possibly say?

“I guess I was going to have to introduce you eventually,” Jean sighed, then patted the ground beside him in invitation.

Eren sat, feeling like a child waiting for a story, and after a few moments Jean obliged.

“Marco and I were best friends since we were kids, we started dating in high school, he proposed to me the day we both finished undergrad. He said he knew right from the start he was going to marry me and the only thing that had kept him from asking sooner was that his mother would kill him if we didn’t finish college first.” Fuck. It was so cute Eren would cringe to hear the story in any other context. “But medical school was expensive and Marco had a big family, the kind who made a real thing of weddings, so we were waiting until we could afford to do it like he wanted.”

But they’d never got there.

“What—?”

“Car accident. Three years ago now. A hit and run by a drunk driver. Who turned out to be one of our friends.”

Eren gaped. What a horrific insult to add to an already horrible injury. “Did they—” he didn’t even know where to start. How could any group of people move on from that, taking a friend’s life in a drunken act of carelessness?

“I didn’t find that part out until months later. One of them, Annie, got caught with drugs, and when they did a full sweep of the car they took a paint sample which matched the chips they’d found on Marco’s clothes.”

Eren swallowed. Damning, but, he knew from Mikasa’s work stories, too easily written off as circumstantial. “Was she convicted?”

“Yes and no. The car belonged to somebody else, a friend who’d been a pall-bearer at Marco’s funeral that twisted bastard, and neither of them would admit who was driving, but they both went down as part of the investigation into the drugs, along with another friend who’d been with them that night. So I guess that has to be enough.”

It doesn’t sound like enough. Not even close.

“Jean, that’s awful, I’m so sorry,” he began, but was cut off when Jean laughed, a hollow, helpless burst of hysteria.

“I was on shift.”

Oh.

Had he known? Eren knew there were strict ethical guidelines about practising on people you knew, and that at Trost General they didn’t disclose information about relatives to staff working there except through the proper channels. But Jean had done his residency at the Reiss Royal Infirmary and perhaps their policies were more lax and they’d been cruel enough to break the news to him and then leave him waiting outside the theatre door, knowing that there was nothing he could do but wait for his colleagues to work.

Jean’s hand, laying on the grass between them, is trembling.

“Jean, you don’t have to,” he says, reaching out to cover it with his own. Whatever curiosity he has about Jean’s secrets and his past, it’s not worth forcing him to relieve the memories of something like this.

“I was just heading on break,” the world spill from Jean’s lips as if Eren’s interruption had never happened, or perhaps was just too little too late when the wound had already been opened. “I glanced through the window of the OR and…”

Fuck.

Fuck, no. Jean can’t be saying what Eren is thinking. The universe was cruel, he’s known that since the day Hannes only had time to get him and Mikasa away before the car went up in flames with his mother still inside, but he’s always hoped and prayed that it was at least his bad luck and that other people were spared the spite.

“He was alone,” Jean confessed. “That’s… everything that happened and that’s the thing that always… they just left him laying there alone. It took ten minutes for a morgue assistant to arrive, I think she must have thought I was part of the surgical team because she asked me about the paperwork and then she took him away. And I let her. I didn’t know what else do.”

His hand wasn’t enough. Eren reached up and wrapped his arms around Jean, pulling him close.

He could say how long he sat like that, holding Jean and trying not to fall apart himself at the way the other man shook in his grip. They’d known each other a year and a half and been dating for more of that than they hadn’t but Jean had always seemed like the perfect embodiment of the brash surgeon stereotype, there’d been slips as he’d gotten to know Jean: a tendency to mull his thoughts over aloud when he was in private or with those he trusted not to judge his process and how much he second guessed himself sometimes, that his rigorous gym habits were fed by a lingering childhood insecurity about his weight rather than vanity, his complex relationship with his mother, but there’d never been any sign of a vulnerability like this.

And when Jean pulled back, his face is almost a mask again, as if even now he thinks he needs to fake composure.

“I know this is a lot to put on you,” he said, and Eren didn’t have the words to explain that he’d help Jean carry any weight he asked without thinking it a burden. “But he was my first… everything, and the plan was for him to be my last too. And now I don’t know how to…”

One finger came up to tug at the chain he wore around his neck everywhere except for surgery. The chain with a ring on it.

Eren swallowed.

He’d seen it so many times, but he’d never thought of it as more than an oddly committed fashion choice. Had they gone old school, and it was an engagement ring? Or had they been close enough to the wedding that Jean had what ought to have been his wedding ring to wear around his neck?

“It seems like you’ve been visiting more lately,” he said carefully. Jean visiting his fiances’ grave several times a week was… Eren didn’t begrudge him grieving, but it didn’t seem like the behaviour of a man ready to move on. “If this is where you’ve been going when you’ve been lying.”

Jean grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

Eren shook his head. “I understand,” he assured Jean. Grief could be messy and the passage of time didn’t always ease that — Eren didn’t think he’d ever be okay with Mother’s Day again. If Jean wasn’t ready to talk, that was fine, the only thing that hurt would be if Eren had given Jean a reason to think he couldn’t share this.

“No, I shouldn’t have lied,” Jean said. “That wasn’t fair to you. I just… haven’t been thinking very straight lately and I…”

So this was a recent development, rather than an ongoing thing Eren hadn’t noticed. “Did something happen?” After everything he’d said about being friends with the killer and stumbling across the body, it wouldn’t be surprising if Jean had been left with some triggers, and, if he’d gotten any help for those traumas, he’d never mentioned a therapist to Eren. Though he’d also never mentioned a fiance.

Jean cast his eyes sideways, with a tension to his jaw that had Eren fearing he’d draw blood as his teeth dragged over his lower lip.

“I heard you talking with Mikasa about your lease being up,” he admitted. “And, my place is big and we’ve been together for a while. The obvious thing to do would be to offer. But…”

That was a big step. If Jean had offered, Eren would have given it serious consideration, but he hadn’t expected it to come up, not with a still new relationship that they were trying to take steady to avoid it messing up their professional status quo.

“There’s no rush,” he said. He’d already spoken to his landlord about drawing up the papers for renewal. “Jean, we’re still a few months short of a year together and if you’re not ready it’s fine, I’m okay with that, I would be even without considering… other factors.”

“But that's the problem, I do want to. I almost offered right there on the spot, without even thinking about Marco, and then I got back there and… how could I do that? How could I have somebody else move in, when it was our home? God, it was his really, I had too many student loans. The only reason I have it now is because his parents signed it over to me.”

That Jean wanted that with him was flattering, but wanting something and being ready for it didn’t always align. Not if the place he lived felt more like it belongs to a ghost than his own home.

“He was important to you. Of course you should consider his wishes…” Eren said. It wasn’t the standard advice, he knew, most people would emphasise moving on and the dead could no longer want anything, but in Eren’s experience all the resulted it was feeling guilty about the urge to honour their memory.

The quiet, rueful laugh that breaks through Jean’s anguish is the best thing Eren has seen all day. “Ah, but you know what the dumbest part is? I know exactly what Marco would say. He'd want me to keep on living my life and be happy. I was always the jealous bastard, not him.”

“He sounds like a good guy.”

“He’d have liked you,” Jean said. “I mean, Marco liked everyone, he was a people person like that, but he would have really liked you.”

What sort of person had Marco been? A good one, to have loved Jean and earned such obvious devotion in return. Somebody Eren might have admired, no, does admired based on Jean’s words. It’s hard to imagine being friends with him, though, what with the whole dating his fiance situation, but then, the fission of chemistry that had first sparked Eren’s interest probably wouldn’t have been there if Jean were happily married to his high school sweetheart, and without the lust Jean would have been just another doctor in a busy hospital, not somebody Eren took the time to get to know well enough to fall in love with.

This is no time to dwell on what-ifs though.

“I’m sure I would have liked him too,” Eren offered. “And Jean, you don’t have to push yourself, recovery is a good thing, but it’ll happen at its own pace. If you aren’t ready to move on…”

“You… you’re the first relationship I’ve had since him,” Jean admitted, though Eren had already suspected as much from the timings and the force of Jean’s reaction. “There were a few… inadvisable decisions, but nothing remotely serious until you crashed into my life. I… god, you turned my world upside-down when I’d been so sure that Marco was it for me, that I was done with love or anything close to it.”

Eren blinked, suddenly seeing Jean’s prickly behaviour in the first months of their acquaintance in a new light, the hot and cold bullshit that had nearly turned Eren away from him for good just a lonely battle between the same pull Eren had felt and a panicked instinct to push away what he’d never expected to have again.

“I love you,” Jean said, the words rushed but firm, like he was scared Eren might doubt it. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but there was a conviction to the words Eren hadn’t heard from him before, like it was no longer just a statement but a promise. “And I want to be with you. I just don’t know how to handle that.”

“However you want,” Eren offered. “We can go as slow as you need.” Even if that meant going backward, he’d rather have Jean’s honest best offering than him thinking it was better to lie and hide his grief. “I love you too.”

This time Jean was the one to reach out, wrapping his hand around Eren’s, and Eren squeezed back.

The road ahead was long, but they’d travel it together.


End file.
